


Evocation

by Frostwyvern



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24037933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frostwyvern/pseuds/Frostwyvern
Summary: Soldier 76 hallucinates Soldier 24.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes & Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m just a sad Reaper main who thinks about him a lot. Unbeta’d so, uh, sorry for any mistakes. 
> 
> Stay frosty!

Jack is twenty minutes out from a gunfight when it happens.

There are ragged holes in his torso, meaning he now has the wonderful task of digging the pellets out, and there is a fiery ache in the ball of his shoulder where it was wretched out of the socket. 

It spooked him a bit. He’s loathe to admit it because it’s ridiculous for something so banal to leave him squeezing his fist until he can feel his own pulse bang-bang-bang away, but there it is.

They snuck up on him. That scares him, because it means next time he might not be as lucky.

Maybe that’s why he’s seeing things. 

“What a dump.”

The voice of a ghost drifts through his little safehouse, at first a whisper and then a genuine sound, as clear as all the other voices in the world.

He knows damn well that he’s hallucinating, but the sound of Gabriel Reyes’ voice is like a fist through the chest, through his mental walls and then through his actual ribs.

“Did you hear me?” the ghost of his best friend repeats, blissfully unaware of the pain he’s causing (or perhaps not caring for it)- “I said, this place is a washed-up dump-hole.”

“Dump-hole isn’t a word,” Jack replies, barely thinking about it. He’s mired in his own worries (that he’s hallucinating) and his wallowing (that he’s hallucinating his dead best friend who he misses terribly.)

"Stickler,” comes the response, another squeeze inside his ribs as the ghost walks towards him with silent footsteps.

Unlike the real ghost, there’s no leaking shadow; this isn’t the ruined revenant that stalks old bases and cuts throats for vengeance. This ghost is together, whole, and younger. Very young; god, he almost forgot what Gabriel used to look like.

But here he is, dappled by dust-mottled beams of light which come through the cracks in the ceiling. The SEP uniform, the 24 emblazoned on the arm. The dog tags. In reality, those dog tags are around Jack’s neck, alongside his own. His own identifiers, and then Gabe’s. It’s the only thing he has left of him. But the ghost has them, much shinier than the real deal, and glinting in that sparse sun. 

“You’re not real,” Jack says, as monotone as he can muster. “Go away.”

“Oh well, nice to see you too,” Gabriel says, his form steady as he ends up in front of where Jack sits. 

Jack swallows hard and glances up. The last time he saw Gabriel, the real Gabriel, not the ‘Reaper’ that’s become him, he looked as exhausted as Jack felt, older than he had any right to look, his handsome face now lined with stress and scars and he had screamed for Jack to _go_ before their entire world went up in flames. He remembers the way Gabriel looked as he took his last breath. That look of panic, then acceptance, but so fierce even in death as he pushed against Jack’s chest with shaking hands, for him to _run, go, before they find you._

The ghost is not that. This is the Gabriel Reyes that Jack first met during SEP induction.

They had them lined up, newly blasted with freezing water and in fresh regulation wear. They were told on a need to know basis, which obviously means they knew nothing, except that they were the second batch of SEP hopefuls. The first were now staring them down. 

“Jack Morrison, sir!” he’d barked, snapping a salute as one man stalked up close to him. Well, stalked was untrue. Whilst he was eerily quiet, with a gaze which felt like a super-intelligent wolf eyeing him up, he was looking Jack up and down with genuine curiosity. 

“This one’s mine, right?” he’d said, not really a question. Glancing behind to catch a nod. “Just my luck to get someone still wet behind the ears. Do you guys do this on purpose?”

Their eyes lock. The man, his senior; 24, the patch on his armour said. He had hazel eyes.

“Do I look scary to you, kid?”

Jack had instantly committed to what was probably the wrong answer. 

“Sir no sir!” he barked. And then the man was a true wolf, suddenly looming over him.

“Are you sure?” he had asked, with real intimidation.

“Yes sir,” Jack had said, surprising himself at how confident he sounded and how unruffled truly he was. And that had brought out a smile on Soldier 24's face- a small one, hidden, just for the two of them.

“Good,” he had said, “Good. And lay off the sir.”

A hand grasped in his, warm. 

“Name’s Reyes. Gabriel Reyes.”

They had reeled off everyone else’s pairs and Jack had paid attention at the time but he was hyper aware that whilst Gabriel scowled the minute he returned to his ranks, there was something about him that was soothing. 

It was there, on the first day. Of course they’d been roughed up, bullied by senior soldiers, it came with the territory. But after the first set of injections, Jack threw up and thrashed and bit down whimpers. He passed out on the floor and woke up in bed, with Reyes leaning in the door frame. The blankets were tucked around him, perfectly so.

Maybe he fell a little bit in love that day. 

He never fell out of love, even when they were strictly forbidden from fraternising, even when the worst war of his lifetime tore through the globe and made monsters of men, even when the war was over and his 24 was the Strike Commander of the brave new world, even when that was suddenly reversed, and when their friends started dying again, and then even over thirty years, thirty years of fighting and reconciling and screaming and loving-

He never stopped loving the man stood in front of him right now.

21 years old, with his non regulation haircut and his prototype armour and his shotguns with an etching done by a paper clip reading _ven a el reyes es mejor que no te pierdas_ in wobbly script because he was drunk when he did it. 

“Fuck, that barely makes sense,” he’d said, and Jack had laughed and laid a hand on the back of Gabriel’s neck and felt the warmth of his skin and drank it in like wine. 

“None of it makes sense to me,” Jack had said, a joke at his own expense, “So I sure hope it’s something nice.”

Gabriel has cackled, pushing the side of his head against Jack’s. 

“Nah man, I just keyed up my guns to insult you. God’s gift, asshole,” he’d laughed, and Jack laughed, and that night had gotten him through many, many terrible ones. 

“Go,” Jack says, finally pulling himself out of his trip down memory lane, “Please. I’m tired.”

“I can see that,” the ghost of Gabriel agrees, a grin spreading over his face, free of the lines of stress that would weigh it down later, “You’re not sleeping.”

Jack rubs a hand over his face. 

“Can’t,” he answers shortly, pain which thrums under the skin of his forehead when he closes his eyes, “Don’t want to.”

He can feel Gabriel’s eyes on him.

“Jackie,” Gabriel says, a gentle rebuke. His voice is so soft. “Come on now.”

He hasn't heard that in a long time, but he does remember it. Gabriel used to scold him when he'd stay up too late, making jokes about how he slept like the princess and the pea, and would rub his warm hands on Jack's shoulders and tell him to get to bed before the sun rose.

“Gabe,” Jack croaks, unable to stop himself as he shivers involuntarily. Hard to say if it is the lack of care for himself, or the memories, that make his skin prickle. 

“You haven’t been taking care of yourself,” Gabriel says, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. What’s your excuse, 76?”

That, at least, brings a tired smile to his face. Or maybe it’s a grimace. Ghost or not, Gabriel is right. He hasn’t been taking of himself. It’s not just that he can’t sleep. He’s barely doing enough to keep his body afloat; it’s really only the SEP’s genetic enhancements that have kept him alive when he’s been trying so hard not to be.

“Don’t have one,” he replies, standing up. He scrubs a hand over his face until he finds the sink, turning the faucet until it runs drips of orange water and then, eventually, a semi-clear stream that he gambles on using to wash his face. 

He doesn’t realise that the ghost is gone until after he’s cleaned the dirt off his face, the blood off his hands, and stitched the hole in his jacket.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An obvious question is posed.

Jack rolls his neck left to right until he hears a crack. With a sigh that feels like it comes from his bones, he turns his visor over in his hands, trying to clean the sand out of it. It's a Sisyphean task, but he tries irregardless. He taps it, lightly, against his knee. Then taps harder. Blows on it, tries to scrub with rubbing alcohol- by the end, it's certainly clean, but it still has sand in it.

Story of his life, he supposes. No matter how much he does, there's still irritation. Or dirt. Mixed metaphors, he muses. All of this is just a distraction from his latest entanglement.

He's been tracking Reaper for months. He's close now. He caught glimpses of him last night, just the edge of his tattered cloak. What is stuck in his memory, leaving a sour taste in his mouth, was the screams of the dying. He knows who the target was. He was a piece of work, truly, exploiting the downtrodden of Cairo. He isn't sad the man is dead. But the screaming- it was feral, like a slaughtered pig.

Maybe it's selfish, but the man who pulled the trigger felt no remorse. He'd chuckled, low and amused, when the screaming had stopped.

Jack sits with his eyes trailed on the floor, feeling ancient and exhausted. He brings his visor up to his face and clicks it back into place. The readouts temporarily overwhelm him before everything settles back to normal. 

“Stylish,” says the ghost beside him.

It should make him jump. It doesn’t.

“Red is in this season,” Jack replies, with a measure of melancholy.

Isn't it sad that even colours fill him with melancholy. Gabe always said colours portray emotions. He remembers asking him what orange meant, and Gabriel had said "Halloween, obviously." And then they had a running joke that the true spirit of Halloween was an emotion, and the emotion was orange. It was a dumb joke, childish.

It makes his heart ache so badly that he would prefer being shot.

“Red is always in,” Gabriel replies. “So’s black.”

“You would know,” Jack says, a little sharper this time. The wound festers.

“Easy,” Gabriel chides, with some measure of sarcasm. He wipes a finger along the dust nearby. “Your words cut deep.”

“If you’re here, tell me where the real you is,” Jack snaps, standing up and stomping over to him, “Be useful.”

“And you wonder why we spent less time together, huh? Go figure on that,” Gabriel replies smoothly, pointedly ignoring him to stare out of the window. “Besides, real-“

He turns around, shoulders hunched before he tilts head up with a flourish and holds up air quotes.

“-'Real me' isn’t really me. Not at the moment. Shit, he has my sense of style and panache, but that’s it.”

Jack licks his lips, trying not to let the anger cloud his judgement. But he’s tired, and hungry. He’s all this hunted and hunting, most of it alone. It's made him a little wild. Or maybe it's just revealing who he really is. That thought is souring, but at this point, he feels nothing but sour.

“No,” Jack says, cold and clear and final. The word echoes. “It is you. You betrayed us, all of us.”

Gabriel won't turn around. He just looks out the window, with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Mm. Doesn’t sound like me.”

Jack bristles, intent on violence. He goes to grab Gabriel by the shoulders and slam him into something hard and solid, but his hands pass through and he deflates.

Right. He's alone. Hallucinating.

“No,” he says, deflating, “It doesn’t.”

That’s what hurts, if it wasn’t obvious.

He knew Gabriel Reyes for more than 30 years. He knew everything about him;

The superficial things (the way he loved to drive dangerously on his stupidly loud motorbike, the way he could play guitar but wouldn’t tell a soul, the way he loved costume design and makeup);

The personal things (that the quiet always made him nervous, that he had a sweet tooth for praline in particular, that he liked it when Jack ran his hands over his hair as long as it was briefly because otherwise grease, gross);

The dark things (that he had seen Gabriel break someone’s neck with his arms, hands, thighs, and feet, that he had nightmares about the war and would always go outside if he could, else to the TV, with that look in his eyes, blank and over-bright at once);

The sweet things (that he remembered everyone’s birthdays, all of their family members and their names, and would always cook their favourite meal out of whatever was available and he was damn good at it.)

Gabriel was the _ends justify the means_ kind of guy. Jack was the _means are just as important as the ends_. They clashed far less than the media had everyone believe; mostly, they compromised, and everything was better for it. Jack could be too idealistic, and Gabriel too pessimistic; Jack was gung-ho and Gabriel a planner. 

Gabriel loved dogs. He was awkward around children but he loved them in a grumpy way. He called Jack’s parents _sir_ and _ma’am_ and they always rang him, not just Jack. He was loyal, in every sense of the word. If someone died, he mourned them. When civilians were caught in a fight, he tried to protect them just as much as Jack did. He was a subtle man. A kind one. 

A dead one.

All of this and he had died, and then un-died, and now Jack had memorised the Reaper’s list. No one squeaky clean, yes, but now he didn't care where and when he engaged his targets. The crossfire would be, and had been, inevitable.

Those shotguns weren't meant to assassinate. 

Gabriel turns around, staring right through him. The illusion is fading now.

“Have you considered why I-“ air quotes, “-am doing this?”

“Revenge?” Jack says, his words harsh, even as he takes a shaky step back, “I asked.”

“Revenge for my death,” Gabriel corrects, “Do you think I should just roll over and die?”

Jack turns, still angry, but silent footsteps snap closer until he can feel but not see the ghost at his neck.

“They killed me. They tried to kill you. Hundreds of people did die in that blast. I thought you wanted to kill the bad guys, boy scout,” Gabriel says, not egging him on but matter-of-fact, “Or are you all talk? Still waiting for me to do the dirty work?”

“Shut up.”

“No,” Gabriel says with a sneer, “You need to hear it. Why do you think I’m doing this? Why am I with Talon?”

“ _I don’t know_!” Jack roars, furious. He wheels around, incandescent, his chest gripped with a shade of grief so red that he feels like he’s bleeding. 

Gabriel watches him, inches apart, but now he looks foggy at the edges. I’m forgetting you, Jack thinks with an ever increasing ache, I’m forgetting who you used to be. The ghost that he's forgetting him looks at him with sad, sad eyes. Hazel. Green to brown, like autumn leaves. If Halloween is an emotion, he's forgetting what it feels like, just like he's forgetting the details on Soldier 24's uniform, the details of Gabriel Reye's face, and how he looked when he smiled.

The memory is fading, but all he feels is grief.

“I don’t know,” Jack says, defeated, “But I didn’t know why you did lots of things. I didn’t ask. I let you do them because I trusted you-“

His smile is a ghost of its own, flagging and failing.

“Look where it got me.”

The expression on Gabriel's face is like a slap. It's soft, but his eyes are hard, piercing. It strikes to deep that he feels some thus-unobtainable truth peel open and it's just outside his understanding. Like seeing something out of the corner of his eye, he grasps at understanding what that look means, grapples with what any of it means, and what any of it was even for.

“Oh Jack,” Gabriel says, softly, “You’re a fucking idiot.”

And then Gabriel is gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soldier 76 talks. Reaper listens.

The blood splatters on ancient stone and he drops to one knee, gritting his teeth. It was a glancing blow, but it still burns. His eyes burn too, for a different reason. All night this chase has gone on, since the sun sunk below the horizon all the way to now, as velvet twilight settles across a city that has no chance to sleep. Always awake. Always restless. He averted another man's death tonight, but the Reaper has come from him in revenge.

It would be some play, some tragedy, were it not his real life. He coughs, wincing as his knee refuses to budge. He knows Reaper isn't far behind him. He may run, but he always follows. As relentless as the grave.

“Why!” Jack yells, over the din of the city below; but it’s not as loud as he thinks and his voice echoes across rooftops.

Reaper slips in trails of black smoke along the cracks in the stone, arranging himself back into a black cloaked nightmare, several metres behind Soldier 76. His presence is a felt thing; like impending doom, like what he's named himself after. Ever-present, and inescapable. He makes no sound, says nothing, but Jack can hear laboured breathing. Not laboured from exertion, but laboured- a rasp, a croak, a dying (dead) man.

"Why," Jack repeats, angry as he turns around to face him.

Reaper tilts his head to the side. It looks so much like a bird that Jack has to bite down a mildly hysterical laugh.

It makes sense- after all, his mask is a barn owl. He’s heard people say it’s a skull, and he can see it, but he knows Gabriel and that’s an owl if he ever saw one.

Owls are deadly predators, silent and rather terrifying when they swallow their prey whole.

“Please,” he manages, inhaling and hauling himself up even when his knee feels awfully shredded and his lungs plead for more time on the ground, or below it, “Please tell me why you’re doing this.”

Reaper advances, one step closer. No answer comes.

Jack holds up one hand. It makes Reaper pause, at least, though his glowering presence grows, spits of smog drifting off his form and into the sky.

“Not revenge. Not because I stole your title. Not because Overwatch failed. None of that makes any sense. You’re the smartest man I know, and you’re rash but you’re not stupid-“

In the blink of an eye, a shotgun slots under his jaw. He moved so fast that Jack has no time to brace himself. Not that he would have. At this point, if Reaper was going to kill him, he would have done it. No, he wants Jack to suffer. And squirm. So he banks on that. If he's wrong, he won't be able to regret it anyway.

“Answer me before you blow my brains out,” he grits out, “I never asked before. I should have. It’s not that I didn’t care-“

The barrel pushes up and it hurts all the way on the roots of his teeth. Fight or flight struggles inside him like a caged bird, rattling and squawking, but he's old enough and experienced enough to be able to ignore it. The truth hurts almost more than fighting ancient biological functions of survival, because the truth is this:

“It was easier to let you deal with it.”

There’s a very slight relaxation in the pressure against his throat. So minute no normal man would be able to tell, but they’re both super soldiers and Jack feels that little pause as loud and clear as the piercing cry of a hawk, high above. It's a sign to keep going, so he does. The air rushes from his lungs in a sea of words which he has either denied, ignored, or covered up for so long that he feels like he's exposing himself in some soulful, agonising way.

“I let you take the brunt of all that ambiguity,” he admits, “It was easier on me if you dealt with it. Easier on me if I didn’t even ask because then no one would tease it out of me in some stupid paparazzi press meeting. And I took you for granted.”

Less pressure. He can feel the red glow of eyes(?) on his face, behind the barn owl’s mask, and the cold tendrils of shadow licking against his shins. Maybe Reaper will still kill him. It would be no less than he deserves, but at the same time, he's at peace with wherever this goes, because he's finally telling the truth. Not only to Reaper, but to himself. To the world, to anyone listening.

“You were a constant in my life,” Jack says, “I never even thought about what I owed you because we’d always been a team. I think… I think I stopped pulling my weight because I was so busy-“

He nearly bites his tongue off when suddenly Reaper is on him, the shotgun replaced with a spread hand, tight on his jugular. The panic ratchets up his heartbeat. His grip is a vice, and involuntarily he struggles as Reaper chokes him. He can feel the fury radiating, how freakishly cold those hands are, the steel-tipped claws on his gloves, how he can feel his life fading, being taken away. Robbed from him.

He forces himself to speak.

“It’s killing me,” he manages, his voice a high and reedy whisper.

“Good,” Reaper growls in reply. He does not relent his grip. His voice is deep, like a dull knife against rocks, and so unlike Gabriel's that it hurts. No wonder no one recognised him. How would they? But Jack supposes he doesn't sound the same either; by less supernatural means, simply age and wounds to the throat that have made his own into something similar.

He's not a monster. Neither of them are. They're both just playing pretend.

“No,” Jack says, his own hands finally coming up to grip over Reaper’s, not to pull them away but just to slide over the top of them, “It’s killing me that I never told you how much I appreciated you.”

For a moment, they do struggle. Locked together, Reaper’s hands squeeze and Jack’s scramble against them now, because he's strong and the body won't simply let itself die- but then, Reaper’s grip suddenly slackens.

Jack takes a deep breath which feels like black fire. He breathes in, and out, and even though he tastes iron and still feels like he's going to be sick or pass out (or perhaps bleed out), he talks. He says the things he didn't say before. Because Gabriel deserves that. He deserves to know-

“I never told you how much I needed you. How much we all did.”

Reaper’s hands slacken further. His claws slip down, an inch or two, until they rest on the bottom of Soldier 76’s neck. There they rest, metal against metal, on the dog-tags of both men. Jack can't tell if he knows, or if he's reading them. It doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things.

“We took you for granted. I was so used to you having my back that I stopped having yours. And I never… I never…”

He hasn’t realised how his head has lolled forward until he feels the top edge of Reaper’s mask a hair’s breadth from his forehead. It seems the violence has died now, and Reaper's form is still. For a moment, he can feel everything. The wind which blows at the hair on the nape of his neck. The cold sting of blood on his knee, the shuddering of his chest, the headache which pounds in his skull. How his eyes ache, his throat feels like an iron ball is lodged just below his Adam's apple. How Reaper feels almost solid, not like a ghost at all. He feels like a person, an inch away. He's solid, and real. He's still real.

“I never made sure you knew that-“

His voice breaks. He can’t say it.

“-Until it was too late. I yelled the last time I saw you. I screamed and I said things I didn’t mean and it’s been six years and it still hurts-“

All these things bubbling to the surface. He pauses, to take another breath. He's glad for the visor, and the night. Water drips down his chin. Splashes the stones below, before seeping through cracks. Reaper hasn't said anything else, hasn't moved. They are simply locked in this spot, until the words are done. And Jack's voice grows angry, bitter- at himself- and he grits his teeth.

“I never thought that it would be the last day, the last moment we had together and then you were dead and all I could do was sit at your grave and fucking weep-“

As quickly as the shotgun had slammed into his jaw, two strong hands tug him closer. It feels out of nowhere, as if the seconds of initiation have been removed. Reaper does not move normally; but here he is. He feels two hands tug at his jacket. He lets himself be pulled into a hug. It's freezing. Reaper feels so cold. The smoke feels like nitrogen, like liquid against his bare skin, and it stings in a strange way. But he doesn't care about that. It is a sensation to be catalogued, and promptly ignored.

He returns the hug just as fiercely.

“I should have stayed with you, or died with you, I should have made sure," Jack says, his voice rough with grief, "I'm sorry."

There is a pause, but then an answer.

“Jack,” Reaper mumbles, and though his voice is still the reverberation of a phantom, through it Jack can hear Gabriel’s voice. It's just a whisper, but it's there all the same. Something in that finally breaks him.

“I’m so sorry Gabe,” Jack wheezes, burying his face in the curve of Reaper’s shoulder. Neither man will admit it, nor acknowledge it, but Jack weeps against the cold fabric with years of pent up agony. A quiet, shuddering agony.

For a few moments, they hold each other in the quiet rooftop night. Cars honk far below, the wind hums through aerials, and the stars look down, silent watchers as the tide begins to turn. When Jack's shuddering stills, Reaper stills too.

“I’m not him,” Reaper says, quiet, “He died. I’m just what’s left.”

Jack listens to the people far below them. He feels detached from them- but not in the usual way. He feels timeless, in this moment. A small smile creeps onto his face. A hidden thing, just for the two of them.

“Even as a shadow,” Jack replies, equally quiet, “Even as a dream.”

He feels Reaper's grip tighten. 

“Euripides,” Reaper notes, "... Nerd."

It's absurd, and it makes Jack laugh, hoarsely. His throat is locked up tight, his whole body quivers like a newborn foal with how wretched he feels, and yet he feels hopeful for the first time since he died. He chuckles, and chuckles, low and strained, because it feels like something, finally, has changed.

All he can do is cling to that hope just as tightly as he clings to Gabriel. He feels the dull clunk of Reaper's mask press against his visor. Forehead to forehead, as much as possible. Perhaps one day they will both take the masks off. But for now, this is enough.

It is more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, mister/ma’am/esteemed reader! Remember, support your local Reapers- we need the help.  
> ☠️


End file.
